Thinking with your head and your heart—emotions as core functions of mind

Professor Gina Grimshaw, from the School of Psychological Sciences, presents her inaugural lecture.

Conventional wisdom often pits thinking against feeling. In this view, emotions are irrational and counterproductive—a source of noise or bias that must be controlled. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The past thirty years have seen an ‘affective revolution’ in the psychological sciences—we now know that emotions are a core aspect of mind, helping people learn from the past, set priorities, and make good decisions.

In her inaugural lecture, Professor Gina Grimshaw will trace her own journey through the affective revolution, from the early days, when ‘real’ cognitive psychologists didn’t study emotion, to her current research in which she and her students are pioneering the use of virtual reality to study authentic emotional states in the lab.

This is Professor Grimshaw's inaugural lecture as Professor of Psychological Sciences. She leads the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab in the School of Psychological Sciences at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, and is a Principal Investigator in Te Pūnaha Matatini—the New Zealand Centre for Research Excellence in Complex Systems.

Three academics, two male, one female wearing academic dress in front of a pale green wall — Inaugural Lecture: Professor David Harper, Professor Gina Grimshaw, and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nic Smith

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